by geoffda » Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:26 pm
The most important thing to keep in mind with respect to "pivoting" or "skivoting" at this level is that fundamentally it is an extension of carving. You don't learn to pivot by practicing twisting your feet and it isn't a seperate (or even a taught) skill. Instead, you develop your carving to the point where you are routinely generating signficant release energy. Once you can do that, it becomes instinctive to manage those forces and move into the new turn in such a way to redirect the skis if and when it is necessary. Ironically, even in a pivot, tipping is still the dominant movement and it's all about edge control. If you want to be able to throw a pivot like Svindal, learn to carve like him and the rest will be easy.
In terms of free foot management, it looks to me like Svindal is trying to keep the free foot back. He is dealing with huge forces at release that are causing his skis to want to shoot ahead, but you can also see a strong two-footed pull back in response as well as continued effort to keep the free foot pulled back throughout the turn. There is a turn at around :49 that demonstrates this. First you see both skis try to shoot ahead as he releases, then you see him pull them back underneath him. You'll also notice that his tips are generally parallel at the moment his skis are flat in transition. One of the things he may have working against him is that it looks like he has long femurs relative to his tibia. While you can see him with a fair amount of tip lead at times, you also see considerable flexion on his inside knee and an acute angle between the femur and the tibia. Unquestionably, he is pulling his free foot back, so it may well be that he simply doesn't have the range of motion available to pull it back any further.